


Loss Ficlet: The First Noël

by missclairebelle



Series: Loss (In Chronological Order) [34]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 05:15:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16737793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missclairebelle/pseuds/missclairebelle
Summary: Before the engagement, the ridiculous dog, homeownership, the wedding, or the events of Act II, Loss Jamie and Claire celebrated their first Christmas together.  This is that story.





	Loss Ficlet: The First Noël

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sassenachwaffles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sassenachwaffles/gifts).



> I received a series of late night text messages from sassenachwaffles requesting some Loss J+C action to Santa Baby. And then this was born.

##  ****

##  **The First Noël**

##  **December 2016**

We spent an entire weekend decking the halls of our new flat.  

Still slick from a Saturday morning of lazy, prolonged, and teasing sex, Jamie announced that he had agreed to meet the Murray clan at a tree farm near Lallybroch.   _The annual Fraser selection and chopping of a tree for Christmas_.  In response, I confessed something that I held incredibly close to the vest.

I had not had a Christmas tree since the year that my parents had died.

He maneuvered me away so he could look at me from arms length.

I was sure that my explanation sounded defensive, but at its core,  _it was defensive_.

_Lamb and I were nomads._

_Bachelor pads are not conducive to Christmas decorating._

_It was just not that important._

_Rarely home, and then only a handful of nights every few months._

“I canna believe ye’ve no’ had a Christmas tree since ye were… what?”

“Huh?” My mind, still faltering a few steps was replaying the accident that took my parents.  ( _Metal and fire, blood and loss.  Imagery I gleaned from a microfiche at a university library when I was thirteen_.)  I was not keeping up with him.

“When yer parents died.  How old were ye?” Jamie’s brow was furrowed and I returned to his chest, nestling my face against his throat.  His skin was tacky –– sweat, musk, scented with the last moments of our joining.   _Even beneath me, he was armor_  –– a sturdy presence to draw me back to the present.   “Five, right?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled faintly, pressing my lips to the button rise of his left clavicle.  I could envision, behind closed eyes, a slim book of fragmented, greyed memories. My first four Christmases were gone. Only the scarred edges of missing pages remained.   _No memories, save one (a Christmas bow, my hair in a braid, my mother’s violet perfume, sucking candy canes down to sharpened points with bits of plastic wrapping flaking off onto my tongue, and midnight mass candle smoke_ ).  “Five.  Don’t get me wrong… Lamb was  _great_ , Jamie.  Better than great, actually. He was just not much of a traditionalist when it came to holidays.”

“I’d say the fact that ye never had a tree told me as much.”  

Humming, I molded myself to his hand as it skated over the swell of my hip.  The nearness of him made the careful excavation of this particular wound smart a little less.   _But Christ it stung_.  “Lamb was more the type who realized it was Christmas Day when it was already half gone. He’d make some sort of mid-afternoon exclamation about it being December 25. Then we’d scurry off to find some local delicacy to celebrate the day with whatever graduate students he was carting around.”

_Christmas in Cairo.  Mumbai.  Xian.  Petra.  Carnac._

“Have ye no’ had presents under a tree then?”

Without thinking, I grated my teeth along his throat, drawing a hissing, subdued “ _ouch, Claire_.”

My tongue and thumb soothed the skin there as an apology. I rested my forehead against his chin.  “Not that I can remember. I spent holidays in medical school wandering the globe –– getting tan, learning bits of Czech or German, Polish or Dutch. Since then, I’ve spent my holidays working.”

_Swallowing, I remembered those Christmases.  Tanning on nude beaches.  Dancing with neon beverages warming my skin, falling into bed with strangers who did not share my language.  Volunteering to “take one for the team” and work Christmas Eve.  Christmas Day.  Etcetera.  Lukewarm catered dinners in accident and emergency departments at various metropolitan hospitals –– nurses and other physicians grumbling about missing their family meals, the mash that auntie so-and-so perfected only once a year, the looks on their children’s faces as they tore into presents wearing paper crowns. The gratitude of patients’ families thanking me for sacrificing my holiday. The tears that came in the shower as I said aloud what I could not say to them –– I am not sacrificing anything._

“But I would have… had presents… with––”

_(I couldn’t even bring myself to say “my parents”; fucking_ **_say it_ ** _, Beauchamp) ––_

“––with  _them_.”

I had been far too young to remember any of it.  

“Oh,” he breathed, massaging the tender area behind my ear with his thumb.

“What few memories I have are likely figments of my imagination. Make believe from the years of watching movies. Stolen bits of friends’ Christmas traditions.” I was fading away and Jamie smoothed back my hair.

Outside our bedroom window morning fog was burning off as the sun began to rise.  I could not remember the last time that I had felt  _sad_  over it ( _over them_ ), but I had been unable to ignore the void now that attention had been called to it.   _I needed silence.  I needed to refocus on the lifting of mist, the greyness of our morning._ Jamie read the mood, quietly drawing smooth lines up and down my naked spine.  After a time, it was as though the sensation was part of me.  “Come with me?” he asked eventually. “We’ll get a tree.  No’ just for Lallybroch.  For  _home_.”

The invitation soothed over the raw parts that our conversation had left, and I accepted with an eagerness that was almost embarrassing.

After donning snow boots and more or less forcing Jamie into a plaid button down ( _with no fewer than three filthy promises he would later be allowed to collect_ ), we hit the road.

For over an hour, Jamie indulged my enchantment with Christmas music. ( _Singing along.  Loud.  Replaying the best ones._ ) He was even gracious enough to sing the second part of  _Baby It’s Cold Outside_ in an awkward, tuneless kind of way.

As the last swell of the tune faded, he deigned to tell me the song was a creepy, anti-woman “fuckboy anthem” ( _at which point I gently asked him to quit adopting the vernacular of his American colleagues_ ). Engaging his newfound penchant to provide feminist critique of Christmas songs, I rattled off an alternative interpretation. The acts described in the song were neither  _creepy_  nor  _nonconsensual_.  “For one,” I began, carefully peeling the lid from my filling station hot cocoa off and blowing a steady stream of cooling breath on it, “it was a  _joke_  back then to ask what was in a drink.  ‘What’s in this drink?’  It’s a joke, hahahaha, as in ‘ _booze is how I’m going to explain my bad behavior_ ’––”

“Wait. How do ye ken  _that_ , Claire? That it was a common joke?”  The amusement was apparent in his voice, lifting it an octave.

“ _Everyone_  knows that,  _Jamie_.”  ( _I had no clue where I had heard it. Probably from the Internet on some sleepless night while I was Googling._ )

“I dinna ken that joke, and I’m part of ‘ _everyone_.’”

“ _Nope_ ,” I trilled, taking a sip of my hot cocoa. Immediately recoiling, I spat the molten liquid back into the cup before sticking my tender tongue out.

“Jesus, Claire. Mark yer cup somehow. I dinna want to mix them up and ingest yer backwash.”

Snorting somewhat indignantly I took another sip and managed to swallow.  “ _Anyway._  The woman in the song isn’t concerned that there’s something…”

“ _Untoward_?” he offered.

“I  _suppose_  that’s an okay word.  _Fine_.  The  _joke_ , if you can call it that rather than social commentary, isn’t concerned that there’s something  _untoward_  in her drink.  The  _joke_  is that she’s intentionally  _sober_.  She’s  _choosing_  to go have some mind-blowing sex with some sexy partygoer.”

“Ye’re a lot to take in. Ye ken that, right?”  He tossed a glance at me, teeth sinking into his lower lip in a transparent, but successful, attempt to restrain a smile.  “Ye’ve got an opinion on  _everything_.”  

My stomach flipped.  The comment and its delivery were not critical.  They were  _adoring_ ,  _loving._

Undeterred, I soldiered on with my searching analysis of  _Baby It’s Cold Outside_.  “Social mores of her time said that  _good girls_  don’t do that kind of thing. Sex outside of marriage, one-night stands, giving in to baser desires,  _etcetera_ ––the trajectory of  _our_  relationship, Jamie––”

“That’s an oversimplification,” he interrupted, a hand mussing his hair.

“ _Anyway,_ our heroine, the song’s protagonist, recognizes that society tells her ‘ _no, no, no_.’”

“Uh-huh,” he intoned, tilting his head towards his own hot cocoa.  I started the work of removing the lid from his cup and blowing gently before holding it out to him.

“But in  _reality_ , she is saying ‘ _yes, yes, yes_ ’ to some mind-bending, social norm-breaking sex.”

“Ye’ve now called the sex alluded to in this mid-twentieth century tune as both  _mind-blowing_  and  _mind-bending_  in a fifteen second span.  Something on yer mind, Beauchamp?”

I cranked my body in the seat to look at him, slipping one leg underneath myself.  “Like  _what_?”

“Really good sex?”

“Oh, sure.”  He raised an eyebrow, a Scottish noise emanating from somewhere deep in his chest.  “Do you know where I can get some?”

His dismissive hiss was strangled by a barking laugh.  “ _Brat_.  I oughta pull the car over and show ye what mind-bending sex is.”

“But you  _won’t_ ,” I teased, leaning back against the window and drawing the zipper on my coat down just far enough that the high neck of my cream cable knit sweater was visible.  “Too many clothes.   _And_  there’s thermal underwear beneath this layer.”

“Those wee leggins’d no’ be a challenge…”  He cast a long glance at me.  Even the hot cocoa hadn’t accomplished that kind of burn. “I dinna need the sweater out of m’way.  I’d not be but a minute or two wi’ ye.”

“ _That_  is mind-blowing?  _A minute or two_.  Please.”

“Ye’re really busting my baws today.”  

I reached across the center console just long enough to pinch his chin.  Clicking my tongue and shrugging, I said, “The GPS says we’re about three minutes’ drive from the tree farm and you’d  _never_ leave those kids waiting.”

The mention of his nephews and niece was like a bucket of ice water over the situation. “I’ll get ye later,” he concluded in a way that left little doubt that he would be planning  _something_.

Six hours later, we had carried the tree up to our flat, watered and secured it in a stand, and draped a glittery tree skirt around the base.  Sitting cross legged on the floor, we laid out our respective contributions to our first joint Christmas tree.  ( _And the first Christmas tree that I would wake up to on Christmas morning and remember_.)

Jamie had a significant store of family heirlooms and tchotchkes packed in a weathered cardboard box marked “JAMMF STUFF.”  Brows furrowed as he unraveled the items from sepia-colored newsprint, he admitted that he had never actually hung any of it.  A smile best described as “wistful” touched his lips as I extracted a Christmas ornament with ‘JAMES’S 1ST X-MAS’ written in puff paint above a cartoon Mickey Mouse.

In a plastic bag, I had a smaller stash of modern, mass-produced baubles. Each had been selected from a sale bin one Sunday afternoon years earlier.  None had ever touched a tree branch.  One by one, I removed postmodern Santa Claus figurines, a dreamy miniature Eiffel Tower with a hole through which to thread a light, and snowflakes with glitter packed on so thick that it flaked off in my hands.  

None of it had even a modicum of sentimental value.

Eyeing the ornaments that Jamie was drawing from a battered paper box, I hesitated with a white tinsel tree in hand. “My stuff not going to fit with your stuff… it’s just…  _junk_.”

Setting his box aside, he crawled towards me on his hands and knees before taking the decoration from my hand. “We’re goin’ to put this ugly wee tree somewhere verra visible.  And every year we’ll remember this moment, this entire day.”  

My eyes widened, burning with the threat of sentimental tears.   _How the hell he had this effect on me, I didn’t know_.  At his waist, I gathered fistfuls of his shirt.  

“And when we set it out every Christmas, we’ll talk about how ye insisted on a Fraser fir just because ye could. This wee thing’ll get scraggly.  We’ll talk about tossing it, but we never will. Because it’ll have  _our memories_  in it. And someday when our first bairn goes off to university, ye’ll pack this up, and send it off to decorate his flat.”

“ _His_?” I asked, snuffling back the small sob rising in the back of my throat.  

The fact that I questioned the gendering of his statement rather than the idea of  _bairns_  apparently didn’t surprise him.  Readily, he clarified, “ _Or hers_.”

_I was getting more than I could have ever bargained for being in a relationship with that man.  Traditions that formed the connective tissue between years and years of togetherness.  Experiences to remember at holiday time.  Someone to remember me._

His smiling lips just barely grazed the tip of my nose.  Holding up the tree, he asked, “Now… where do we put it?”

Hours fell away as we threaded cranberries ( _only one making it into Jamie’s mouth before he announced cranberries to be the least desirable member of the berry family_ ) and fat white kernels of popcorn ( _substantially more than one bite making it between our lips_ ) onto a line of sutures nicked from the hospital.  

The tree was something to behold.  Adorned with no fewer than four strings of lights, swooping lengths of gilt garland, and the combination of the ornaments of his childhood and my shop purchases, only one thing was left. Jamie turned a tinsel star over and over in his hands, offering me a smile that did not reach his eyes.  His quiet explanation duplicated my own deduction when he whispered, “My mam’s.”  

_I was not the only one a little bit emotional over the start of what we had already promised would become a ritual._

I reached for his forearm. Jamie brushed his lips over my forehead.  

“C’mon then. Let’s finish our tree, Sassenach.”  

With next to no warning, he hoisted me up by the waist.  Squealing a little as we maneuvered closer to the tree, I managed to secure the star to the highest prickly branch. As if we were stuck in slow motion, he let me slide back down. The breadth of his touch spanned my waist as he drew me backwards against his chest.  Breath warm on my ear, he started to hum and sway with his thumbs hooking through my belt loops.  My eyes narrowed, trying to place the tune as I took in our first Christmas tree ( _my_   _first Christmas tree_ ). Resting my head against his chest, I closed my eyes and reveled in the glow of the Christmas lights still warm through my eyelids.

 _This tree was ours_.

_And it was perfect._

After a few moments, I recognized the vibration coming from his chest as a quite uneven rendition of  _Baby it’s Cold Outside_.  

_Yes.  Perfect._

Quickly, I developed a nightly ritual to make our flat glow.   Lighting candles ( _each named some ridiculous thing like Santa’s Winter Workshop or Cinnamon Icicle_ ).  Plugging in Christmas lights ( _the illumination luring every glitter-covered ornament out of their dark hiding places, coloring the walls with shimmering, shuddering light_ ).  Tuning the stereo to Christmas music ( _my voice missing the uneven pitch of my boyfriend joining me on the choruses as I sang along_ ).  My newfound Christmas cheer was suffocating.

On December 23, I woke to my alarm at 3 a.m.  After a shower, I dressed in the darkness of our bedroom, trying to make as little sound as possible.  As I finished winding my hair into a French braid, Jamie caught me by the back of my dress pants.

I hadn’t even realized he was awake.

“Watching ye dress has given me the most terrible cockstand, Claire.  Come back to bed.”

The invitation was tempting –– syrupy from beneath the duvet, thick on his drowsy tongue, and smelling of him.  

Our week had been on a tight rein and defined largely by the exhaustive lead-up to the holiday. ( _Christmas presents for our trip to Lallybroch –– selected in store, purchased, wrapped, and stashed under our tree for safe keeping.  A service appointment on Jamie’s car in anticipation of the drive.  Challenges in presenting a marketing campaign to a dog food company that Jamie had anticipated, but made his schedule exceptionally unforgiving.  My status as the on-call attending disrupting the precious hours our sleep schedules aligned at least three times._ )  Other than some perfunctory and reciprocal oral sex a few days earlier, we had been separate.  And the distance was wearing on the pair of us.

Words could not adequately express the disappointment on his scruffy face when I leaned forward to give him the most chaste of kisses, whispering, “You’re on your own, champ.”

“I’ll wait.”

“Will you?” I raised a skeptical eyebrow, looking down at the upward press of his arousal under the duvet.  I thought and dismissed the idea of slipping a hand into the sleep-warm cocoon just to give him a little tease.   _The braid wouldn’t survive and I was positive I’d have to change my clothes_.

“I’ll be celibate until I see ye again,” he mumbled wrapping his arms around my pillow.   “Celibacy extends to no’ touchin’ myself.”

I snorted a touch derisively, earning a “ _you’ll see, I’ll wait_.”

And by “ _wait_ ,” he meant sending me a series of progressively dirty texts throughout the day.  

Beginning with a benign compliment: “Your arse in those pants. Christ, Claire.”  

Explaining how the thought of me bent over his desk and said pants at my ankles was distracting him from a boresome telephone conference.  

Describing in florid detail the reactions he liked best in my body when he touched or kissed me.  

A romanticized recitation of what it was like the first time he tasted my lips, neck, and breasts, the space just below my navel and between my thighs.  

The exercise culminated with Jamie’s comprehensive, colorful, and unequivocal statement of everything he intended to do to me when he arrived home.  

Reading the text in the toilets, I held my hand against the stall to steady myself.  Until that point, I had been able to parry his sexts.

But the  _last_  ( _how wet he would get me, the way he would spread my legs in front of the fireplace, where he would begin to taste me, how he would go about his task and what it would do to him, etcetera_ ), made my cheeks color pink, my mouth go dry, and my knees knock together on the toilet.

Before I could reply, his next text came through:  _You can’t even respond, can you?_

I typed, deleted, typed, deleted, chewing my lower lip.  I settled on:  _You’re incorrigible and I’m going to have a special surprise for you when you get home.  Seven?_

His response was immediate, as if he knew what I would ask:  _For you, 6:30. I’m imagining you all flushed, aroused, maybe clutching your pearls in exasperation over my plan.  Just wait, Sssnch._

I took a quick selfie, duck lips exaggerated and one eye closed, a peace sign up.  I sent the photograph with the caption:  _Can’t you get autocorrect to spell it out? L-a-z-y._

Almost immediately, I received three consecutive texts––

First:  _You’re texting in the toilets aren’t you? The tile is a dead giveaway._

Second:  _I can’t waste time typing all of those vowels. I need to save my energy for screwing you senseless well past midnight and into Christmas Eve._

Third:  _I love you, see you soon. Xx._

His certainty in his  _plan_  set my own into motion.  

I would fill one of the plaid shirt promises.

 _Stripping_.

If I had planned at all ahead, I would have developed the yuletide theme a bit more than filching a Santa hat from the doctor’s lounge at the hospital.  

Maybe I would have scheduled a festive Christmas wax ( _a star to lead the way? a Christmas tree? something else that I was generally not creative enough to fathom as pubic hair coiffure_ ). I could have invested in some sexy holiday-themed lingerie ( _though a perfunctory Googling identified only gaudy things that would make me glow as red as Rudolph’s nose –– see-through crotchless knickers with white furry trim, candy cane-themed attire billed as the perfect accoutrement for “Santa’s little stripper,” and similar ilk_.)

Two and a half hours later, I was showered, perfumed, and carefully outfitted in the nicest lingerie I owned ( _oxblood lace that made me feel like the human embodiment of the word vavavoom_ ). Studying myself in the mirror, I pulled the stolen Santa hat on over a careful assemblage of loose curls.  “You’re basically naked and look  _ridiculous_. Now you’re  _talking_  to yourself.”

I had to admit two things, though.  

One:  _I looked positively sultry_.

Two:  _Jamie was going to break apart on reentry_.

Elbows-deep in our closet, searching out a sweater to cover up until he arrived home, I paused. For only the briefest of moments I grazed the marled chunky knit sweater reserved for weekend lounging.

 _If this were a betting game, I was upping the ante_.

A white dress shirt, freshly laundered, but still smelling of him.

At the sound of his key in the door, I sat up in his office, pulling my bare feet off of his desk and slipping them into the black patent heels on the floor.  Listening carefully, I heard him mutter a string of confused profanity when he found my note ( _Make yourself at home on the couch. xx. C_ ).

“Claire?” he called. Even when he was out of sight, I could picture the nightly routine I had been witness two for a few weeks now.

 _Coat off.  Briefcase on the entryway floor.  Two fingers in the knot of his necktie –– breaking the solemnity of the workday.  Scanning the flat for me._ _God. He searched me out when he arrived home_.)

“What’re ye up to, Sassenach?”

Biting the inside of my cheek, I rose and smoothed nonexistent creases from his shirt.  

Leather moaned under his weight.  

_The couch.  He listened._

I picked up my phone, navigating to the app that controlled most of the things in our home.  

_Living room lights lowered._

He chuckled ––  _low, husky_.

_Christmas lights on._

“Are ye up to mischief, Ms. Beauchamp?” he called, voice directed towards the bedroom rather than the office.  

_He had no idea._

_Music_.  

The  _ba-boom ba-boom ba-boom_  of the opening chords of  _Santa Baby_  pulsed through the living room soundbar.  

I dried my palms on the sides of his shirt.

_Sexy, Beauchamp.  Be. Fucking. Sexy._

When Eartha Kitt’s voice started in with her admonition about slipping a sable under the tree ( _rasping, feminine, knowing, coquettish_ ), I stepped out of the office and pressed my back against the doorframe.  His eyes roamed over me starting from the top ––  _the Santa hat, his shirt, my bare legs, the shoes, and then back again_.  With each pass his mouth fell a bit more agape.

Eartha crooned that she“ _had been an awfully good girl_.” I raised one arm above my head, leaning against the doorframe.   Little of what was happening came naturally to me, but at Eartha’s directive that  _Santa baby hurry down the chimney tonight_ , I melted down the wall.  While I had little concept of how it looked, I figured Jamie was appreciative when he hissed, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Claire.”  

Bringing myself back to full height slowly, attempting to push my backside out, I gave him my most serpentine smile.

One step from the wall, I brought my fingers to the top button.

“ _I’ll wait up for you dear_ ,” I sang along, fixing my gaze on him.

 _Top button: check_.  

Jamie moved to stand.  I tutted and shook my head, continuing the divestiture of my ( _his_ ) clothing.  

 _Buttons two and three: check_.

I bit my lower lip, partially because I knew it would drive him wild and fractionally because of my lacking improvisational skills.  I should have  _practiced_  while waiting in his office instead of sipping a caramel-flavored whisky that he had poured into what I recognized as his father’s crystal decanter.

My girl Eartha filled the silence with “ _think of all the fun I’ve missed_.”  

I released my lip, glancing down.

A sliver of Oxblood lace was visible.  

Jamie shifted just slightly on the couch.  

_Good._

One foot in front of the other, my mouth moving with the song just so, I tilted my head to the side as I moved onto buttons four and five.  I had expected to feel embarrassed –– to glow pink and just shrug out of his shirt and go about the business of having sex with my boyfriend.  

But the tease was  _delectable_.  

 _Jamie_  was the one glowing pink, one arm crossed over his stomach and the fingers on his opposite hand worrying his lower lip.

“ _Santa cutie, and fill my stocking with a duplex and checks_ ,” I crooned along, unfastening the bottom button.  

I was near enough then ( _inches_ ) that I could smell him ––  _his cologne, the mint he had probably popped between his lips on the way up the stairs_.

His pupils dilated as I shed his shirt like a second skin.  

It hit the floor with a quiet, starchy swish.

_My heart was beating out of control.  The way he looked at me ––reaching for me, groaning and hard, lips parted –– was one of the most erotic things that I had ever seen._

Shaking my head again, I turned slowly to face away from him.  

My hands roamed the landscape of my body in a way that it usually did only outside of his gaze ––  _ribs, sides, hips_.

I hooked fingers into the lace, edging it down and off one side.  With the type of shimmy I had theretofore only seen on television dance competitions, I looked over my shoulder and down at him. I couldn’t help but to smile.  His lips curled into a smile to match mine as he kissed the newly bared expanse of flesh.

“I ken I’ve said this before.”  His lips scored me in a way that made me weak in the knees.  “Yer’ve got the finest ass I’ve ever seen.”

“You’ve so implied before,” I said blandly, rounding with hands on my breasts.  I pulled them free of the cups. “ _Come and trim my Christmas tree._ ”

He muttered something profane about coming in his pants and I  _giggled_ ( _though I was too aroused to be made self conscious by my tittering, obnoxious reaction_ ).  As the song slowed, I reached for his hands and guided them to my hips.

I barely recognized my own voice.  It was as though I had adopted Eartha’s worldly, husky tone.  Gently urging his hands to remove the fabric, I directed him to unwrap me.

Our hands moved together over my hips, the swell of my thighs, until lace was pooled at the heels.

“Are ye finished wi’ yer show?  Yer almost effectual attempt to murder me?” he asked.  I was still well trussed up by my bra, but I nodded. I reached to cup his cheek.  His fingers sank into the flesh of my thighs as he pulled me closer.  “Ye’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

Without pretense, he insinuated a knee between mine, knocking my stance apart just enough to create a space for his his mouth between my thighs.  I brought my other hand to his shoulder, unabashed by the relieved moan that barreled out of me at the meeting of his tongue and my flesh.  

My instinct was to arch away from his mouth, but his hands secured me to his face.  His tongue made quick work, but he stood just as the fire erupted in my belly, signaling my impending finish.  

“Can I have ye in the bedroom?”  

I responded with a frustrated, unsatisfied noise. My feet freed themselves of the forgotten oxblood lace knickers.  Jamie lifted me easily, guiding my legs around his waist.  For a moment I thought of protesting the mess I’d likely leave on his shirt, but he kissed the words right out of me. It was like he had seen the thought, found it abhorrent, and needed to rid the protest from my mouth.

While I had expected him to disrobe and make good on his promise, he laid me on the edge of the bed and resumed the job he had started in the living room.

I brought a hand to my face.  His ministrations mirrored precisely what he’d promised via text message.  

 _And yet it was more_.

In minutes, he had me keening his name, taking the Lord’s name in vain, and slurring vowels.  I came hard and aching, the feeling drawing taut every muscle from my feet to my shoulders. Mouth made dumb by his ministrations, I rolled to my side after.  He gave me the kind of self-satisfied chuckle that I had been introduced to early in our relationships.

“Can we try something new?”

I swallowed once.  Twice.  Three times.

He had the audacity to laugh then, fingers finding clasp of my bra and finally freeing me of the remaining scrap of fabric.  

I suppose that I heard the rustle of his clothes as he disrobed, but a few moments he was looming over me naked with his cock appearing to be almost painfully hard.  

“Claire, can we––”

“Yeah, s’fine.”  My consent was a blurry mumble over the swell of Christmas music from down the hall. It earned me another laugh. 

He kissed his way down then.

 _Forehead.  Nose.  Cheeks.  Lips.  Chin.  Collarbones.  Breasts.  Hips.  Backs of my knees.  The blades of my shins.  The tops of my feet_.

 _Fuck_.  

I closed my eyes, taking fistfuls of the duvet cover into my hands.  

Keeping me on my side, he brought one of my legs over his middle and straddled the other. “Mind-bending? Mind-blowing? That’s what ye were after the other day, right? More than a minute or two?”

I slurred some version of “ _mmmmhmmm_ ,” unable to engage in anything even remotely resembling banter.

Holding my leg up, he guided himself into me.  

_Oh, I had missed him this week.  The closeness of the most basic of human connections._

After a few thrusts, he appeared to lose English.  

Gaelic that I had never heard flowed from him –– a conversation between himself and the universe alone.  Playing witness to his abandon made something coil tightly, almost uncomfortably, in my belly.  My hands found his on my thigh, holding on as he plunged into me again and again.  I ground back against him, earning phrases that I  _did_  recognize ( _a dhia, mo chridhe_ ) and my name ( _somehow broken into multiple syllables, a purr_ ).  

In the end, he held on just long enough for me to see stars. The rosy glow of Christmas lights from down the hall permanently imprinted themselves behind my eyelids as I cried his name, begged for him.  And after he finished inside of me, stilling with a shuddering gasp and a cry of pure reverence, I resituated our limbs. I drew him down to rest the length of his body over me and gathered the duvet over our sated, limbless bodies.

I kissed his cheek, damp and salty. I could feel his heart beating against my ribs, and wanted nothing more than to stay there forever, not moving, not making love, just breathing the same air.

“I love you, James Fraser.”

_Christmas in Cairo.  Mumbai.  Xian.  Petra.  Carnac._

“I ken ye love me.  And I love  _you_.”

_Christmas in Scotland.  Christmas at home.  In love.  Aglow._


End file.
